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The weekend weather

GoogleAt least 1,836 people lost their lives in 2005's Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane.

The temperature climbed up to 91 at 12:54 p.m. yesterday at Central Park, up to 90 around the same time at the Staten Island weather station in Travis, our second 90-degree reading of this year. We're looking at similar high temperatures today, with moderate humidity, under partly cloudy skies.

The difference today is that a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms has entered the picture, and will stay with us right throughout the weekend. A very slow-moving cold front now in the Midwest won't get here until the beginning of next week, but in advance of it we're looking at a series of little disturances for the next few days. None of them promise anything more than a 30 to 40 percent chance of rain this weekend, but chances are, wherever you are, you'll get wet briefly at some point.

The proximity of the disturbances will drop the temperatures a little bit, with a projected high of 88 on Saturday, 82 on Sunday, although the humidity will remain summer-like.

More interestingly, a low pressure system now down in the Caribbean is progged to make its way into our region by Sunday-Monday. This is a non-tropical low, but it has access to a lot of moisture and could dump much of it on us by the end of the weekend. Its track is very uncertain at this point, but it currently looks to be a bigger threat for eastern portions of the New York metro area.

Speaking of the tropics, today officially begins the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. Researcher William Gray of Colorado State University yesterday came out with an updated prediction for the season, calling for 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, which would make it a very active year. The National Weather Service outlook is putting out similar numbers.

Gray's outlooks are generally pretty accurate, although he was dead wrong last year, calling for another very active season when it was in fact eerily quiet (we saw just 10 storms and five hurricanes, none of which made landfall in the United States). Gray says there's a 74 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. coast this year, but we'll just have to see about that.